Go to the Doodle poll. Type your name and then check all the times when you are available to meet. I’ll send a first round of emails before 9:30 letting you know when you’ll meet. You can comment here or email me if you have questions or concerns.

In their readers post last night, Ethan, Nikki, Mike, and David mentioned recent events in Uganda and South Carolina, which treat homosexuality “as something that should be kept behind the scenes to oneself.” I’d like to point you to a few secondary sources on these events from last week and pose a question or two.

Uganda passed a law criminalizing homosexuality last week, so consenting adults who engage in homosexual sex might be punished with life in prison and anyone who is found to be counseling gay people faces 7 years in prison. Here is the Wikipedia article describing the law. The next day, one of the Ugandan tabloids published “EXPOSED! Uganda’s 200 Top Homos Named,” which seemed to be a provocation not only for the police but for vigilantes to go after the people identified.

Some American pastors served as consultants for the nation of Uganda in drafting this bill, including Scott Lively, an anti-gay activist best known for his book The Pink Swastika, which has been thoroughly discredited by historians but that blames the Holocaust on homosexuals. Lively’s organization has been officially designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Lively was interviewed by NPR’s Michele Martin on 2/27 about the Ugandan law and gay rights. The first part of the story may or may not be interesting to think about, but the reason I’m linking you to this interview is the ending. Lively says that perhaps the Ugandan law is a tiny bit extreme, and proposes his own best case scenario for how homosexuality should be handled in the US, to return to the times before the Stonewall Riots Alison Bechdel describes in chapter 4. Lively says:

Well, I believe that societies of the world have an affirmative duty to protect the natural family and to discourage all sex outside of marriage. And I’m talking about adultery, fornication, homosexuality, incest, all of it. But I also believe that in our societies we should have, you know, reasonable tolerance for people who decide to live outside the mainstream discreetly. I think we had a pretty good balance in the 1940s and ’50s in this country. Unquestionably, it was a family-centered mainstream culture and subcultures in which homosexuals and others could live out their lives and be happy.

There’s also an article from last week about the South Carolina legislature punishing the College of Charleston for including Fun Home on a list of recommended reading over the summer. One legislator in South Carolina said that it is inappropriate to have open discussion in college classrooms about homosexuality–that such topics are not worthy of scholarly attention. Bechdel is quoted as replying, in part, that “It’s sad and absurd that the College of Charleston is facing a funding cut for teaching my book – a book which is after all about the toll that this sort of small-mindedness takes on people’s lives.”

Think about these sources and chapter 4 of Fun Home.

• What does Bechdel mean when she asserts that Fun Home is about “the toll that this sort of small-mindedness takes on people’s lives”?
• If Lively got his wish and we returned to the 1950s when gay people kept their sexuality “discreet” and hidden from the outside world, then would everyone get to “live out their lives and be happy,” as he asserts?
• Based on what we’ve read of Bechdel’s book, what sorts of impacts might such a cultural and legal turning back have?

Readers (due 2/24): David K, Chris, Adam, Wyatt
Responders (due 2/26): Eric, Brittany, Elizabeth, Chuck
Historians (due 2/28): Vini, Max, Cas, Alex, Joshua
Off this week: Ethan, Nikki, Mike, David H.

Readers (due 3/3): Ethan, Nikki, Mike, David H.
Responders (due 3/5): David K, Chris, Adam, Wyatt
Historians (due 3/7): Eric, Brittany, Elizabeth, Chuck
Off this week: Vini, Max, Cas, Alex, Joshua

Because of the chaos of last week, I’ve once again updated the calendar. Here’s what we’ve got coming up this week:

• T, Feb 18 11:30 am to 12:30 pm in Callaway N203: Studio times for Tracing Maus assignment
• T, Feb 18 Catch up on Maus & Tracing assignment. [Postponed the start of Fun Home until Tuesday. We’ll reset, discuss both books of Maus and questions you have about the Tracing Maus assignment.]
• Wed, Feb 19 10:00 to 11:00 am in Callaway N203: Studio times for Tracing Maus assignment [Rescheduled from earlier this week, since we lost that day to the snow too.]
• Th, Feb 20 UC chpt 9 & Fun Home “Old Father, Old Artificer”
• T, Feb 25 Tracing Maus assignment due. [Moved the due date back to Tuesday, to give you a little extra time after the studio time & discussion on 2/18]

I can’t believe we’ve lost yet more class meetings to snow. Someone must have missed the memo that Emory is in Atlanta.

I’ve had to reschedule my conference yet again as a result of this latest weather event. I’ve spent the day canceling flights, catering orders, room reservations, dinner reservations, and starting to look into dates in the future when we can reschedule the event.

Here’s why this matters to you: if Emory is opened on Thursday, then we’ll have class since I won’t be at my conference. This would bring us back more or less on track.

The reader response for this week was posted earlier today–you should all read and think about it. I’d suggest leaving comments on the post if you have thoughts or questions. The responders do not need to get something posted tomorrow. I’ll give the responders and historians some further instructions about those posts on Thursday, which will vary depending on whether we have class or not.

In the meantime, there are two assignments for you to work on between now and Thursday:

First, I’d like you to work on your domains. If you haven’t changed your theme yet, do so. Make certain that the front page is a static page, not a posts page. Choose an image to go on your home page, preferably a photo of yourself. Write a paragraph or two of text for your home page, welcoming readers to your site and giving some sense of your interests and affiliations. I will create and post a badge for myself like the badges I had you make and I’ll ask you to insert the badge on your site and have it link back to my page here. I’ll also ask you to insert some text indicating that you’re taking part in the Domain of One’s Own pilot and to insert the Domain badge on your site.

Second, join in on the first #allwrite collaborative Google doc before midnight on Wednesday. Here’s the text announcing the project & providing further instructions, written by Janine Debaise:

This week, my students are going to take the lead in setting up a google document that explores the environmental implications of the food we eat. (They figured it was a universal topic — everyone eats food!) We’re hoping to get as many people as possible contributing.

We plan to begin on Tuesday at 1 pm EST and end Wednesday at midnight EST. (Let us know if you think your students need more time — we can extend it.)

My #nifkin students will use Eustace B. Nifkin — a legendary, unofficial student  — to spread the news.

On twitter, tell your students to follow @follownifkin

https://twitter.com/FollowNifkin

Or if they prefer Facebook, they can follow Nifkin here:

https://www.facebook.com/eustace.nifkin

Or they can check out Nifkin’s blog:

http://follownifkin.blogspot.com/

Or they can follow Nifkin on Google+

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108299374849622677649/posts

By Tuesday at 1 pm, we should have instructions up everywhere.

Or if you’d like to just give them direct links, you can use these bit.ly links:

bit.ly/FoodEnv

bit.ly/EnvFood

REMIND YOUR STUDENTS AND FRIENDS TO SIGN THEIR NAMES AT THE BOTTOM.

Since I only have 20 students in the class, they are really hoping for participation from some of your students. I keep telling them that there are students in Georgia who want to collaborate with us ….

This sort of collaborative writing is probably best done from home anyway, so it’s the perfect activity to take the place of classtime missed because of a snow day.

Leave comments here if you have any questions at all. More tomorrow!

Readers (due 2/10): Vini, Max, Cas, Alex, Joshua
Responders (due 2/12): Ethan, Nikki, Mike, David H.
Historians (due 2/14): David K, Chris, Adam, Wyatt
Off this week: Eric, Brittany, Elizabeth, Chuck

Readers (due 2/17): Eric, Brittany, Elizabeth, Chuck
Responders (due 2/19): Vini, Max, Cas, Alex, Joshua
Historians (due 2/21): Ethan, Nikki, Mike, David H.
Off this week: David K, Chris, Adam, Wyatt

I’ve shared Google docs with the groups for the next two weeks. If there are any issues, let me know.

Please note that I have updated the Calendar page.

I have indicated that class is canceled next Thursday because I will be running the Domain Incubator conference. I have reserved our regular classroom, Callaway N203, at two additional times in order to reschedule the studio time you would have had on that class that was canceled:

• Wed, 2/12 from 10-11 am
• Tues, 2/18 from 11:30am – 12:30pm

I will be present during those two hours. I’m not going to require you to attend either of these hours because it’s likely that for many of you, there are other classes that will conflict; however, I strongly encourage you to come to one or both of them to work on your first project. Bring your copies of Maus, your traced pages, the digital file after scanning your traced pages, and whatever writing you’ve done. I’ll expect that you spend the hour in the classroom working on your project and I’ll be available to answer questions, but also you can help each other out as you work. Hopefully by that point you have a pretty decent first draft and we can work on reshaping the text to take advantage of the hypertext medium and to deal with any issues that may arise while you work toward publishing your first project to the site.

If you can’t make it at either of those times, then perhaps we can schedule some other time to meet.